Archaeology Wordsmith

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mongoloid geographic race, Asian geographic race.CATEGORY: cultureDEFINITION: A major race of humankind to which American Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts belong. This human populations (local races and microraces) is located in east, southeast, and east-central Asia. Mongoloid peoples are also found on many of the islands off the Asian mainland (e.g., Japan, Indonesia, the Aleutian Islands) and in the North American Arctic (the Eskimo).

CATEGORY: cultureDEFINITION: The native people of Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands, Japan, who are physically different from their Mongoloid neighbors. They once lived by hunting, trapping, and fishing and also grew buckwheat and numbered about 17,000 in the 1940s. Ainu appear to be descendants of the early Caucasoid peoples who were once spread over northern Asia. They did not undergo the sociocultural changes of the Yayoi and Kofun periods, but remained Epi-Jomon until about the end of the 8th century; it then was transformed into the Satsumon culture. The Ainu were pushed northward over the centuries by the Japanese. Intermarriage and cultural assimilation have made the traditional Ainu almost extinct. Their most important ritual, the Bear Ceremonial, find parallels in Okhutsk ceremonialism.

Baikal Neolithic

CATEGORY: chronology; cultureDEFINITION: The Neolithic period of the Lake Baikal region in eastern Siberia. Stratified sites in the area show a long, gradual move from the Palaeolithic to Neolithic stage, starting in the 4th millennium BC. The Postglacial culture was not true" Neolithic in that it farmed but Neolithic in the sense of using pottery. It was actually a Mongoloid hunting-and-fishing culture (except in southern Siberia around the Aral Sea) with a microlithic flint industry with polished-stone blade tools together with antler bone and ivory artifacts; pointed- or round-based pottery and the bow and arrow. Points and scrapers made on flakes of Mousterian aspect and pebble tools showing a survival of the ancient chopper-chopping tool tradition of eastern Asia have also been found. There was a woodworking and quartzite industry and some cattle breeding. The first bronzes of the region are related to the Shang period of northern China and the earliest Ordos bronzes. The area covers the mountainous regions from Lake Baikal to the Pacific Ocean and the taiga (coniferous forest) and tundra of northern Siberia. A first stage is name for the site Isakovo and is known only from a small number of burials in cemeteries. The succeeding Serovo stage is also known mainly from burials with the addition of the compound bow backed with bone plates. The third phase named Kitoi has burials with red ochre and composite fish hooks possibly indicate more fishing. The succeeding Glazkovo phase of the 2nd millennium BC saw the beginnings of metal-using but generally showed continuity in artifact and burial types. Some remains of semi-subterranean dwellings with centrally located hearths occur together with female statuettes in bone."

epicanthic fold

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: epicanthal fold, Mongolian eye foldCATEGORY: termDEFINITION: The skin and flesh immediately above the upper eyelid; a fold of skin across the inner corner of the eye (canthus). The epicanthal fold produces the eye shape characteristic of persons of Asian (Mongoloid) geographic race; it is also seen in some American Indians and occasionally in Europeans (e.g., Scandinavians and Poles).

Mal'ta

CATEGORY: siteDEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic site in south-central Siberia. There are traces of a dwelling and a burial of a young person of possibly mongoloid affinities, as well as several art objects. The Upper Palaeolithic level is dated to the beginning of the last glacial maximum, c 24,000-23,000 bp. The artifacts include prismatic cores, retouched blades, and end scrapers.